Presently, satellite communications systems are becoming ubiquitous for communicating large amounts of data over large geographic regions. In typical satellite communications systems, end consumers interface with the systems through user terminals. The user terminals communicate, via one or more satellites, with one or more gateways. The gateways may then process and route the data to and from one or more networks according to various network protocols and tags processed at the network layer and above (e.g., layers 3 and above of the Open System Interconnection Reference Model (OSI) stack).
While utilizing higher layers to route communications may provide certain features, such as enhanced interoperability, it may also limit certain capabilities of the network. For example, routing limits the types of tags that can persist across multiple sub-networks. For these and/or other reasons, it may be desirable to provide ground-segment networking with enhanced functionality. Hence, improvements in the art are needed.